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2019 Saw Most Exchange Attacks Ever, With Hackers Becoming More Savvy

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As cryptocurrency exchanges beef up their security to defend themselves against cyberattacks, hackers are responding in kind by amping up their techniques — and the data shows that they’re finding success.

Cryptocurrency exchanges faced more successful attacks in 2019 than in any other year since bitcoin began trading on public exchanges in 2011, according to data compiled for a recent report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. While the 11 attacks recorded in 2019 nearly doubled those conducted in 2018, the total damage ($282.6 million stolen in cryptocurrency in 2019 versus $875.5 million in 2018) was drastically less. 

The total amount of funds stolen in both 2014 and 2018 — which each superseded the amount looted in 2019 — were the result of the industry-altering Mt. Gox hack in 2014 and the half-billion dollar Coincheck hack (from which the spoils were mostly in NEM), respectively. 

Excluding these two hacks, 2019 was actually the worst year for the total amount of assets seized through hacks or similar attacks, such as phishing. However, the average number of assets stolen per hack decreased last year from 2018. This damage was partly mitigated, Chainalysis points out, by enhanced security measures and more appropriate custody practices; more exchanges, for instance, are storing fewer funds in hot wallets than they did in previous years.

“Only 54% of the hacks we observed in 2019 took in more than $10 million, compared with all hacks in 2018,” Chainalysis’ blog post reads. “While the increase in the number of individual hacks should be concerning, the data indicates that exchanges have gotten better at limiting the damage any one hacker can do.”

Cryptocurrency Exchange Hackers Improve Tactics

Still, as exchanges improve their defenses, hackers are improving their offensive strategies as well.

During a $40 million hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance in 2019, for instance, the attackers used a combination of malware and phishing to bypass security and override the multisignature key signing that is required for withdrawals.

In this war of data, as evidenced by the hard numbers Chainalysis’ research has produced, blockchain analysis is also becoming more sophisticated as attacks become more complex. And yet again, malicious actors have responded to the intensified scrutiny with greater agency to obscure funds. 

Specifically, they are using CoinJoin and mixers (which were practically never used prior to 2019, in part because reliable joining markets didn’t manifest until late 2018) to muddy the trail — to little avail, though, as Chainalysis can still trace funds with relative certainty. 

In fact, to ensure that its methods aren’t exposed, “[they] have to be very careful when publishing research so [they] don’t give [hackers] a blueprint,” Chainalysis economist Kim Grauer told Bitcoin Magazine. “To what extent are we allowing criminals to know what we’re capable of so that they can adapt their strategy accordingly?”

She added that “there’s reason for us to believe that they know what we’re capable of doing,” referring to the newfound urgency of hacking syndicates to not only mix coins but move them to exchanges for liquidation. Before 2019, it was not uncommon for the infamous North Korean Lazarus Group, for instance, to wait 500 days before moving funds. But last year it spared less time, often moving them in under two months post-hack to liquidate them on exchanges with relatively loose KYC requirements.

While Chainalysis believes that Lazarus is behind more attacks, Chainalysis has only published data on its $7 million DragonEx hack — as stated before, it doesn’t want to expose its hand on the other hacks that it believes Lazarus is involved in for fear of giving it a chance to circumvent surveillance. 

Cashing Out 

While unable to speak directly about the Lazarus Group, who is believed to have been involved in numerous exchange hacks to help North Korea fund its nuclear program, Grauer said that “Tether is a big part of” cashing out for most other syndicates. In other cases, the criminals are looking to convert altcoins to bitcoin. 

These on- and off-ramps are proving to be the last line of defense in the war against cybercrime. Indeed, Chainalysis and law enforcement can’t control what happens after funds are stolen, but with cooperation from exchanges, it can stanch the flow of funds through these exit points. 

These incidents are “already very much on the radar” of law enforcement, Grauer said, citing active investigations into 2019 hacks. Now, Chainalysis hopes exchanges will adopt its know-your-transaction (KYT) tools to keep tabs on stolen funds and to flag high-volume transfers directly from mixers — a tell that these funds may have come from illicit seizure.

With some 50 percent of funds stolen in 2019 still waiting to be liquidated, according to Chainalysis data, these KYT measures, which Binance alone is currently employing, could help officials find funds after the fact. But it will be up to law enforcement agencies to track down and book the culprits because, as Grauer reminded us, blockchain analysis is just one of the weapons in their arsenals.

The post 2019 Saw Most Exchange Attacks Ever, With Hackers Becoming More Savvy appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Do CoinJoins Really Require Equal Transaction Amounts for Privacy? Part One: CashFusion

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Although Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper suggests that privacy was a design goal of the Bitcoin protocol, blockchain analysis can often break users’ privacy. This is a problem. Bitcoin users might not necessarily want the world to know where they spend their money, what they earn or how much they own, while businesses may not want to leak transaction details to competitors — to name some examples.

But there are solutions to regain privacy, like CoinJoin. Some of the most popular mixing solutions available today use this trick, including Wasabi Wallet (which leverages ZeroLink) and Samourai Wallet (which leverages Whirlpool). In both cases, users chop their coins into equal amounts to mix them with each other. Using equal amounts is considered a crucial step for the mix to be effective.

However, a new mixing protocol called CashFusion, in development for the Bitcoin Cash network, challenges this assumption. The developers behind the protocol claim that CashFusion offers privacy through CoinJoins without the requirement to only mix equal amounts. If true, this might drastically change how we think about privacy in Bitcoin as well.

If true…

CoinJoin

Let’s start at the beginning. (Or skip this part if you know what CoinJoin is.)

A typical bitcoin transaction has one or several inputs (basically the addresses coins are sent from) and one or several outputs (basically the addresses coins are sent to). If a transaction has more than one input, it’s usually because the sender used several chunks of his coins (UTXOs) to get to the required amount. If a transaction has more than one output, it’s usually because several people are being paid at once (a batched transaction) and/or the payer is sending money back to one of his own addresses as change (because the chunks didn’t add up to the exact right amount; this is often the case).

Unfortunately, a typical transaction as outlined here reveals a lot. For example, it’s easy to conclude that all input addresses belong to the same person, which allows for address clustering. The transaction also shows from which addresses to which addresses coins are moving, revealing a trail of coins over the blockchain. There can be more (subtle) hints, and all are bad for privacy.

A potential solution to this problem, first proposed by Bitcoin Core contributor Gregory Maxwell in 2013, is called CoinJoin. The idea behind CoinJoin is simple: Several independent transactions are merged into one big transaction. So if two transactions have two inputs and two outputs each, this is combined into a single transaction that has four inputs and four outputs. This at least breaks the assumption that all input addresses belong to the same person and could help break the trail of coins as well.

Why Equal Amounts

It is usually assumed that the privacy gains of CoinJoin as described above would be limited, however. In many cases, the amounts sent in the inputs and the amounts received in the outputs can be puzzled together, to rediscover which individual transactions went into the combined CoinJoin transaction.

For example, let’s take two transactions, one from Alice to Carol and one from Bob to Dave. Alice has two chunks of coins worth 2.3 and 1.4 bitcoin, and she wants to pay Carol 3.2 bitcoin. Bob has chunks of 3 and 2 bitcoin, and wants to pay Dave 4 bitcoin.

Simplified, these transactions look like so:

2.3 + 1.4 = 3.2 + 0.5

and

3 + 2 = 4 + 1

(The 0.5 BTC and 1 BTC outputs are change.)

Merged together, the CoinJoin transaction would look like so:

3 + 2.3 + 2 + 1.4 = 4 + 3.2 + 1 + 0.5

Although the transactions were merged, it’s trivial to rediscover which inputs paid which outputs, and, therefore, also which inputs can be matched together as belonging to the same sender. Assuming you know that there are two payers, the amounts can be puzzled together with only one potential configuration: the original transactions.

For this reason, popular mixing solutions like ZeroLink and Whirlpool are limited to mixing equal amounts. No matter what amounts are put into a mix as inputs, the mixed outputs are indistinguishable from one another, which means that any participant could have received any fixed-size chunk of coin.

If the fixed amounts are set at 1 BTC, Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave’s CoinJoin would look like so:

3 + 2.3 + 2 + 1.4 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 +1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 0.5 + 0.2

This is a big improvement, since any of the chunks of 1 could be puzzled back together into either of the two original transactions. It’s not clear which of the 1 BTCs belong to Alice, Bob, Carol or Dave, or even to which pair.

However, it’s still not perfect, because there are unequal outputs left. These change outputs, exactly because they don’t have equal amounts, can still be linked to specific inputs: Alice’s. This also means Alice’s inputs can be linked to each other. On top of that, if the unequal outputs are used in combination with the fixed-amount outputs later on, these leaks could ruin the initial mixing process itself.

CashFusion

CashFusion, a project by Bitcoin Cash developers Mark Lundeberg and Jonald Fyookball, set out to deal with the “leftover” outputs problem. They initially created this as an addition to CashShuffle, which is an implementation of CoinShuffle for Bitcoin Cash, and mixes equal amounts. The somewhat surprising potential of CashFusion could also mean that it becomes its own standalone mixing protocol, however.

To understand this potential, let’s look at another set of transactions. Let’s say Alice wants to pay Carol 4 coins, and she has two UTXOs worth 2 and 3 coins. Meanwhile, Bob wants to pay Dave 9 coins, and he has two UTXOs worth 7 and 8 coins.

Simplified, these transactions look like so:

3 + 2 = 4 + 1

and

8 + 7 = 9 + 6

Merged together, the CoinJoin transaction would look like so:

8 + 7 + 3 + 2 = 9 + 6 + 4 + 1

Now, from this CoinJoin transaction, it’s possible to puzzle together the original two transactions, of course. However, even if you know that there are two payers, several other combinations are possible as well.

For example:

8 + 2 = 9 + 1

and

7 + 3 = 6 + 4

Or:

8 + 2 = 6 + 4

and

7 + 3 = 9 + 1

Or:

7 + 2 = 9

and

8 + 3 = 6 + 4 + 1

Or:

7 = 6 + 1

and

8 + 3 + 2 = 9 + 4

For the sake of simplicity, this example only used round numbers. This makes more potential configurations possible but will actually not reflect reality very often. On the flipside, this simplified example only used two original transactions. In reality, a CoinJoin could consist of dozens or even hundreds of original transactions. So while simplified, this simplification both helps and harms the potential of creating multiple configurations.

CashFusion is built around the theory, derived from the field of Combinatorics, that a large enough CoinJoin transaction will often (if not always) offer several different solutions to the puzzle, even when realistic amounts are used. And that, as more inputs and outputs are included, more potential configurations can be derived from it. (This should be especially true if the amounts are in the same ballpark — like 1 BCH — which CashFusion users are encouraged to do for the sake of their own privacy.)

As there are more potential solutions to the puzzle, a blockchain analyst will have a harder time figuring out which solution was the original configuration. This should break the trail of coins and make it harder to link inputs together. As such, it should offer privacy.

To improve this potential, CashFusion includes an extra trick to make it even harder to puzzle together the original configuration: It lets users semi-randomly chop up their outputs into several smaller outputs. So instead of Alice paying Carol one output of 4 coins, Alice could, for example, send Carol outputs of 3 and 1 coin. Bob, instead of paying one output of 9 coins, could send Dave outputs of 5, 3 and 1 coin.

Meanwhile, users are encouraged to provide several inputs as well, perhaps from previous mixes. This allows them to consolidate their smaller chunks into a bigger chunk, without that being obvious on the blockchain. (Alice would, for example, provide inputs of 2 + 2 + 1; Bob would provide inputs of 6 + 5 + 4.) Indeed, consolidating smaller inputs into bigger outputs was the original idea and serves as the origin of the protocol’s name: CashFusion.

But Does the Assumption Hold Up?

To disappoint you if you read this far looking for a final conclusion: This article will not provide a definitive answer to the question whether CashFusion’s assumptions hold up or not, or to what extent. In fact, it seems there isn’t a definitive answer yet. The proposal has gone through relative little peer review so far, and while the developers behind CashFusion believe their solution offers sufficient privacy, others appear a bit more skeptical.

On the face of it, CashFusion’s approach seems misguided, as earlier unequal amount mixing schemes like Blockchain’s SharedCoin were broken years ago. But the crucial difference, Lundeberg and Fyookball now believe, is that a CashFusion transaction would include more inputs and outputs than a SharedCoin transaction did. Similar to other nonintuitive mathematical quirks like the birthday problem, the number of potential configurations grows exponentially for each added input and output, solving the problem SharedCoin had — though Lundeberg agrees better math proofs will be necessary to properly confirm this.

The CashFusion description itself does include what Lundeberg self-admittedly considers “napkin math,” of which a slightly more advanced version was also published by him on Reddit. These estimates suggest that even with only 10 participants, each providing 10 inputs to be consolidated into one output (for a total of 100 inputs and 10 outputs), the number of possible configurations would, on average, be in the range of 100 quintillion. (That’s a one with twenty zeroes, or 10^20.) Even just computing all of these possibilities would take quite a bit of time — nevermind correctly reestablishing the original transactions.

At the time of writing this article, more research is ongoing; Fyookball recently published his own analysis in this blog post. For now, Lundeberg, Fyookball and others are at least sufficiently convinced of the CashFusion protocol to want to deploy it. An alpha client of the CashFusion software is available for testing; a full release is expected within months.

But others aren’t as convinced. A critique of the proposal is that — even if the 10^20 number (roughly) holds up — not every output of a CashFusion CoinJoin will be equally likely to have come from every input. In other words, while some people may gain significant privacy, others could gain much less privacy from the same mix. And for any individual user, it’d be difficult to tell whether they are the ones gaining much privacy or not. (This critique and other critiques can be found in this recent bitcoin-dev email thread.)

By contrast, equal-amount mixing offers similar privacy to all participants and results in a maximum number of possible configurations. In a way, equal-amount mixes result in a “perfect” CashFusion CoinJoin and is, therefore, strictly better — if the unequal change problem is ignored.

Still, even if CashFusion would never completely replace equal-amount mixing, it might just help solve the unequal-change issue, as originally intended…

Author’s note: There is a bit more to the CashFusion proposal, like how the CoinJoin transaction is constructed. There are also several more subtle risks and trade-offs when it comes to privacy, like how users handle their coins before and after the mix. For simplicity and readability, this article focuses only on the central and arguably most interesting idea behind CashFusion: unequal-amount mixing.

Thanks to Mark Lundeberg for information and feedback.

Part two of this article will cover another non-equal amount mixing technique called Knapsack.

The post Do CoinJoins Really Require Equal Transaction Amounts for Privacy? Part One: CashFusion appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Wasabi Wallet Launches #BitcoinIsSafe Campaign to Counter Erroneous Antivirus Detections

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Recently, Wasabi Wallet users have reported multiple instances in which antivirus programs identify both Wasabi and the newly integrated Bitcoin Core as “system infections.” More specifically, the computer security algorithms for Avira, Bitdefender, Kaspersky and F-Secure (and many other antivirus softwares) confuse full Bitcoin nodes with unwanted cryptocurrency mining programs that run in computer backgrounds and steal processing power (a type of malicious attack whose popularity peaked during the 2017 bull market).

In response to this phenomenon, Wasabi Wallet developers have started a social media campaign — distinguished by the hashtags #BitcoinIsSafe and #WasabiIsSafe — as a way of encouraging community members to write to the providers of their antivirus software and demand that Bitcoin and Wasabi be labeled as “false positives.”

On the Wasabi Wallet website, Bitcoiners who want to join the reporting movement can obtain an email template, a list of online forms and email addresses for sending the false-positive-label requests and some tutorials that are meant to offer a graphical step-by-step guide throughout the process.

While Wasabi is clearly incentivized to free its own product from system infection designations, the campaign is also pushing to ensure that Bitcoin Core spreads as widely as possible.

“Bitcoin Core is considered to be Bitcoin’s reference implementation,” Wasabi contributor Riccardo Masutti explained to Bitcoin Magazine. “A malware warning confuses users, and might deter them from running a full node — and full nodes are among the most important parts of the whole Bitcoin ecosystem.”

Wasabi Wallet and Bitcoin Core

In December 2019, Wasabi Wallet launched version 1.1.10 — the first to include a partial Bitcoin Core integration for users who want to connect with their full nodes. This addition effectively maximized user sovereignty while simultaneously minimizing both the need to trust Wasabi and the use of Neutrino as an alternative for full nodes.

“Wasabi Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet for desktop,” Masutti said. “We decided to integrate Bitcoin Core to offer a better user experience and to allow users to install a full node in the simplest way possible.”

Historically, Wasabi Wallet never had issues with antivirus programs during scans. However, the developers have been able to identify an older problem with Bitcoin Core on Windows, which they are now trying to fix through the awareness and reporting campaign.

“It was only after the integration of Bitcoin Core into Wasabi that I discovered that all antiviruses mark the software as malware/a potentially unwanted program,” explained Massuti. “Nobody in the past really cared because very few people would run Bitcoin over Windows or other ‘commercial’ operating systems. Most people installed Bitcoin Core on Linux.”

GitHub reports about antivirus software crashing Bitcoin Core on Windows date back to 2014 and have been a recurring theme in 2017, 2018 and 2019. As Bitcoin adoption accelerated, the number of reports and complaints also increased. With adoption growing even more, this trend could continue.

And the problem doesn’t concern only Windows. In order to confirm the false-positive detection, I ran Bitdefender Total Security 2020 on macOS Catalina. The result was similar: The antivirus software labeled Bitcoin files as malevolent mining software. Though the separation between full nodes and mining clients have existed in Bitcoin since 2013, software security companies haven’t updated their policies — in fact, they’ve hardened their detection systems due to the emergence of background and browser miners for altcoins like monero.

Through the #BitcoinIsSafe, #WasabiIsSafe campaign, the Wasabi Wallet team wants to keep Bitcoin Core from being flagged by antivirus software.
Bitdefender Total Security 2020 identifies Bitcoin files as “infected” on macOS Catalina.

#BitcoinIsSafe, #WasabiIsSafe and Responses from Bitcoin Core Developers

As mentioned above, Wasabi’s social media campaign invites users to send reports to their antivirus software providers and recommend the removal of Bitcoin Core from their list of malicious mining software to solve this problem.

“I thought about all the previous campaigns carried out by the Bitcoin community (for instance, #ProofOfKeys) and I thought, ‘Why not ask the whole community for help?’” Masutti said. “A few hours passed and the #BitcoinIsSafe, #WasabiIsSafe initiative was born. My idea is that the best and most effective solution is to start a false positive reporting campaign and tell users to report Bitcoin and Wasabi Wallet as a false positive to their antivirus.”

The plan was also described on Bitcointalk by Wasabi lead developer Adam Ficsor (nopara73), and high-profile responses quickly followed. Seasoned Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell suggested that Core binaries could be renamed as a way of circumventing the keyword-based detection system of antivirus programs. The solution is presented as a complement to reporting, which solves the issue until the antivirus companies finally decide to take action.

Shortly afterward, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr explained that voluntary mining isn’t malware and should also be reported as a false positive. His proposal involves the creation of a more expansive list of affected projects that have no malicious components (as opposed to the backdoor miners with which the likes of Bitcoin Core and BFGMiner are sometimes wrongfully associated). At press time, the campaign is ongoing without a firm resolution. If you would like to join the movement, all of the required information about reporting false positives is available on the Wasabi Wallet website.

The post Wasabi Wallet Launches #BitcoinIsSafe Campaign to Counter Erroneous Antivirus Detections appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Why Proof of Reserves Is Important to Bitcoin

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Bitcoin is a movement founded on individual monetary sovereignty, transparency and peer-to-peer auditability enabled by a breakthrough in technology. It launched at a time when trust in the world’s financial institutions was at an all-time low and struck a chord. Bitcoin’s success has led to profits, which has, in turn, led to complacency. Today, people are once again placing their trust in new crypto institutions, some of which have done very little to earn that privilege. Over $4.4 billion was lost as a result of crypto exit scams and thefts in 2019 alone and billions more are likely at risk right now. 

The technology to provide auditability and transparency for bitcoin held in custody has been inherent to the protocol from its inception. However, the industry has been slow to incorporate these features for end customers. As once-siloed companies bid to broaden their offerings (exchanges adding custody, lending, etc.), complexity will increase and transparency on proof of reserves (allowing customers to confirm that the service they are using does in fact hold their bitcoin, on-chain) will become even more important. The ability to offer proof of reserves will become a tool to earn and retain customer trust.

Some Challenges in the Path to Proof of Reserves

While the idea of proving that bitcoin sent to a particular service or company is still held by such company might seem trivial to some, there are about as many ways to structure custody and interaction with customers as there are altcoins in the crypto universe.

Some services like cold-storage vaulting allow for relatively straightforward implementations while others, like trading on exchanges, can be more complex. Beyond the technical challenges, it is important to highlight some of the business reasons.

1. Hot-(Warm)-Cold wallet security structure is prevalent in the industry.

Many exchanges are structured in a hot-warm-cold wallet security framework. In this setup, the hot wallet manages a limited balance and is used for inbound and outbound transactions. The warm wallet is a whitelisted bridge between the cold and hot, and the cold, as the safest, holds the majority of the assets. This setup allows for quick withdrawals, improving customer experience as well as operational efficiencies through transaction batching, and at the same time, be able to benefit from the safety of cold storage. 

Some services offer periodic audits of their cold, warm and hot wallet balances. They have used increasingly clever ways for customers to verify that their balances were indeed included in the audit. (This has to be done openly while at the same maintaining customer privacy). Although the audit verification methods to date are still somewhat cumbersome for customers (given they are not real-time), they are a step in the right direction.

2. Growing pressure on custodial services to monetize their Assets Under Management by lending

Contrary to what some may think, there is an enormous supply of bitcoin looking to be lent to earn a yield. In fact, the rates to lend and borrow bitcoin are lower than those to lend and borrow cash and equivalents (USD), meaning that (currently) there is an oversupply of bitcoin in the market (in comparison to the demand for borrowing bitcoin). 

While this phenomenon has been primarily led by the increasing popularity of bitcoin interest accounts, competition is bringing new players into the space looking to monetize bitcoin that is in their custody. Presently the market is becoming flush with digital assets looking for yield — and it shows no sign of stopping. As the allure of holding fractional reserves of assets increases, proof of reserves can act as a way for end customers to keep the platform’s levels of fractional lending in check or verify whether their funds are there or not.

Let’s Be Proactive: Don’t Trust — Verify

Irrespective of the type of asset or industry, aggressive lending practices eventually leads to trouble. In order to prevent a credit bubble from occurring, transparency on funds is paramount. Let’s try to build the right tools and educate the Bitcoin community on the importance of transparency before another QuadrigaCX or Mt. Gox happens.

And it can be profitable! In an industry with such low switching costs and a growing user base, transparency can be the winning differentiator for people looking for a new service provider for their digital asset needs and a good reason to remain there.

Bitcoin has given us the tools to build a new financial system that is transparent and open to the world — an opt-out of an existing system full of unknowns as Satoshi described. Let’s keep the ethos of Bitcoin alive as we build financial services for it — let’s not recreate the world we had to escape. Services that give customers the information they need to make good decisions will win in the long run.

The post Why Proof of Reserves Is Important to Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Nayuta Launches Hybrid Full Node/SPV Mobile Bitcoin Wallet

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On December 9, 2019, Nayuta announced the launch of what it claims is the first application to enable a “Bitcoin full node and SPV [simplified payment verification] node” on mobile devices. 

The Japanese company, best known for releasing the fourth Lightning Network client which operates on the grounds of the BOLT protocol, Ptarmigan, has published the installation kit for its new wallet on GitHub. All Android phone owners should be able to download and install Nayuta’s wallet software, and the full validating node will automatically get pruned according to storage space availability. 

Sovereignty in a Mobile Wallet

As portable solutions for Bitcoin sovereignty become more practical and popular among users, device manufacturers and developers are finding creative ways to maximize their potential. About a year ago, running Bitcoin and Lightning nodes required static hardware and a remote connection. Thanks to the contributions of Blockstream developer Lawrence Nahum, who worked extensively on the ABCore project, now full Bitcoin nodes can be run on any Android phone with enough storage space. Launched in October 2019 during The Lightning Conference in Berlin, HTC’s Exodus 1s was the first retail product to take advantage of this significant innovation. If the phone proves to be successful, then more manufacturers are expected to follow the trend. 

Interestingly, Nayuta’s wallet doesn’t make use of the proprietary Ptarmigan Lightning implementation and opts for the more popular LND.

“This product is actually separate from Ptarmigan,” project lead developer Christian Moss clarified. ”Ptarmigan is for IOT devices, whereas this new release is a mobile app running on Android.”

In conjunction with the full node, the new release takes Bitcoin sovereignty and privacy on the go to a whole new level.

A Full Node/SPV Hybrid

However, it’s its status as a full node/SPV hybrid that appears to be most intriguing, as many people who choose to validate their own transactions are unlikely to take a step back by putting trust in third parties.

“The full node Lightning wallet is on mobile, so when people are out and about using the mobile wallet and they have limited data and battery life, it makes sense to use the hybrid. Then, when they are at home with their mobile phone charging and on WiFi, the full node can start syncing and validating the blockchain,” Moss told Bitcoin Magazine.

Correspondingly, SPV mode is only for emergency situations when transactions really have to be made in critical conditions and access to mobile data and battery availability are scarce. 

For those seeking more technical details about Nayuta’s hybrid full node and SPV Lightning wallet, Moss has written an extensive article. Its contents can serve as a step-by-step tutorial that users can follow in order to set up their wallets. 

The post Nayuta Launches Hybrid Full Node/SPV Mobile Bitcoin Wallet appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.